Suburb Wants to Ban Waving

By Prescott Carlson in News on Feb 23, 2010 3:00PM

If you spend even a modest amount of time in downtown Chicago, you're likely familiar with Vincent Falk, the literally colorful computer programmer who has a penchant for gaudy suits and loves to dance on bridges along the Chicago River and wave to passing tour boats below. Falk acts out of pure joy, but let's say somebody wanted to pay him to do what he does. Would that simple financial transaction suddenly put Falk's waving under purview of the local government? Some trustees in northwest suburban Fox River Grove would probably think so.

Village board members Cindy Cramer and Gerald Menzel want to do away with a local tax service's practice of stationing an employee along the roadside dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume, who simply waves at motorists passing by. The Daily Herald reports that the pair stated in a board meeting that it is a "nuisance and possible safety hazard." They want to do away with the reckless repetitive wrist twisting, or at least limit "human advertising" to a range of daylight hours and/or only during certain months of the year.

The perpetrator of the egregious hellos to drivers, Liberty Tax Service, has branches across the country and many use the practice to get attention and draw in business to their offices which are often found in nondescript strip malls. The owner of the Fox River Grove franchise, Charlie Nason, told the suburban paper that the waving Lady Liberty generates "70 percent of its new customers" around tax time, and that "it is vital to [his] business." Nason also said that among all the offices in the Northwest suburbs, his was the only one where the promotion was presented as an issue.